Of the 22 percent of IT buyers who say they’ll be purchasing tablets for their employees during the second quarter, a market-murdering 84 percent say they’ll buy iPads, a seven-point jump since the last survey.

Can anyone else compete? Samsung (with an eight percent share) is down two percent, HP is down one percent, Asus is down one percent, Dell is down two percent, and even RIM is down two percent in the survey results. (A tangential data point: AT&T and Verizon are tied as IT’s favorite wireless providers.)

Meanwhile, Apple is seeing record pre-orders for the new iPad and Canaccord Genuity analysts now expect the company to sell a staggering 65.6 million iPads this year. Talk about a reality distortion field. Somewhere Steve Jobs is smiling. And he’ll keep smiling. Canaccord Genuity also predicts that Apple will move 90.6 million tablets in 2013 and says Apple’s rivals will likely continue to struggle to introduce competitive products.

Hardware geeks can wax poetic about the underappreciated virtues of competing tablets and their woefully overlooked operating system benefits, but it sure seems like the market has spoken.